19 Takeaways from the Cavs’ season-ending loss

Inside the Cavaliers dream season turned nightmare.

CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Cavaliers‘ season started and ended with a bang. Albeit the ending bang was the sound of Donovan Mitchell’s open palm slapping the heavy door to the media room on his way out after his team won just five postseason games for the second year in a row.

This year was supposed to be different. The Cavs opened the year on a 15-game winning streak en route to accumulating 64 wins across the next six months. And it took just 10 days to throw all of it completely away.

The Indiana Pacers earned their 114-105 Game 5 victory just like they did in their other three wins this series. They played with more force, hit more threes, were the better defensive team, and dictated the terms of engagement.

The Cavaliers didn’t roll over like they did in Game 4. But it never really felt like they were going to win this one. The same issues that popped up repeatedly in this series were still there in the closeout game.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” Mitchell said afterward. “Didn’t want to believe it. Don’t want to believe it. I still don’t want to believe it. It’s tough. It’s tough to win in this league.”

Mitchell returned to the court twice before leaving. First, nearly 20 minutes after the game ended. And then, he went out of his way to walk the entire sideline again an hour or so later before finally leaving.

“I love playing in that f****** arena,” Mitchell said. “That energy, that crowd. And we’re 0-3 at home. You know, I let the city down. This place is special. This place is really special. And we didn’t get it done.”

Mitchell didn’t let the city down. There was nothing more you could realistically ask of him considering the injury that he was playing through.

It was clear his calf was bothering him from the opening tip. He was still effective early on as he scored 13 first-quarter points by repeatedly attacking the rim and paying the price for doing so.

The cumulative toll of doing that for five straight games caught up with Mitchell in the second and third quarters. His explosiveness was completely zapped as he got caught from behind in what normally would’ve been a fast-break dunk.

Yet, he didn’t quit. Mitchell dug deep and summoned something in the fourth to help keep the Cavs afloat. Missed free throws — which is something Mitchell has been struggling with recently and has spent extra time after practice trying to correct — combined with his and his teammate’s ability to hit open shots, eventually did them in.

It was a valiant 35-point outing on a night he couldn’t move or hit his usual threes. Mitchell went 8-25 from the field while adding nine rebounds and four steals.

There was simply nothing more Mitchell could’ve been asked to give.

The Cavaliers’ two biggest strengths from the regular season didn’t translate to this series. They couldn’t hit threes, and their depth completely fell off. Both shortcomings were on display again.

The poor shooting wasn’t just a variance issue. The Cavaliers certainly missed plenty of open threes. They shot under 30% from deep in four of the five games, and made less than 10 threes twice — something they didn’t do once in the regular season.

Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle mentioned pregame that his team wants to “make it hard for them” to make threes. He wouldn’t elaborate on that when I tried to get more specifics from him, before just mentioning “it’s playoff basketball.”

This is where Indiana’s physicality came into play most. Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson talked about wanting his team to play with force. He described that as “getting to your spots” on the court.

The Pacers continually won those battles, which meant simple things such as getting the ball up the court, flowing into your offense, and generating the normal level of ball and player movement were considerably more difficult than it was in the regular season.

The depth players are only as good as the system. Cleveland’s reserves were all put in a position to be their best self in the regular season. Their skills were amplified in Atkinson’s egalitarian offense. But once that gets taken away, so does the effectiveness of the role players.

Ty Jerome’s struggles are separate from this, but it isn’t surprising that Isaac Okoro, Dean Wade, and Sam Merrill (who couldn’t play Game 5 with a neck sprain) looked considerably worse when the system they were in fell apart.

This had a cumulative effect. In the end, Cleveland wasn’t playing their brand of offensive basketball or winning with the depth they had all season. It was their opponent doing that to them instead.

Kenny Atkinson didn’t want to use injuries as an excuse. They were a factor in how things unfolded, you can’t deny that when watching Mitchell and Darius Garland not being able to properly rotate on defense, or being without three of your five best players in Game 2.

But it wasn’t the overall reason why the Cavs lost. They were simply out-executed at every turn. There’s no escaping that.

Evan Mobley was one of the few bright spots. He consistently beat mismatches in the post and was one of the few Cavaliers playing up to or arguably above his usual standard.

Inexplicably, he wasn’t featured in the offense as much as you’d like him to. Mobley’s touches disappeared in the second and fourth quarters. That is both on the guards and on Mobley. He needs to do a better job of demanding the ball and making sure he gets it in his spots.

Still, it’s difficult to be anything but encouraged by the incredible growth Mobley showed this season. He performed well in the playoffs, including his final game, where he provided 24 points on 8-12 shooting with 11 rebounds.

Jarrett Allen briefly showed how good he could be. He opened with Cleveland’s first basket, continually drove to the rim, and provided numerous hard screens that opened up room for Garland and Mitchell to get downhill.

In short, he was everything the Cavs have needed from their center position in the first 12 minutes.

And then, his production just disappeared, not to be seen again over the final three quarters.

This is what makes the Allen experience so frustrating. He shows you that he has the skills to be the missing piece and perfect complement to Mobley’s game. Allen can be a great rebounder, he can be an excellent rim runner, and he can be a physical screener who separates defenders from their assigned man. But he doesn’t do those things consistently enough in the way the Cavaliers need him to.

Allen and Mobley have the same shortcomings. Neither are consistent screen setters, neither handles physicality well, and neither has a super high motor. Those traits aren’t dealbreakers. As Mobley has shown, you can be one of the best bigs in the league with those characteristics. But you aren’t necessarily a good playoff fit with someone else who also has those same faults.

The best playoff teams are the ones that have the most options in their Swiss Army knife. Not necessarily the one that’s the most skilled, which is often the case in the regular season. Because when the Cavs have needed something in crunch time in the playoffs, Atkinson has consistently turned to someone with a different skill set than what his best big already has.

This — along with the various salary cap/second-apron reasons — is why Allen seems to be the member of the core four that is most expendable. The Cavs don’t necessarily need what he does best, and he doesn’t make Mobley better in the ways that a complementing center would need to.

This isn’t a two-center issue. It’s a this center issue.

The Cavs have limited means of improving this offseason. They will be a second-apron team next year. Most importantly for the Cavs, you can’t combine outgoing salaries in trades. For now, the Cavaliers are more or less locked into this group, or would need to find the perfect trade partner.

This all means that the margin for error is so slim because there simply aren’t many levers to pull.

This season was a failure. The Cavaliers are a much better basketball team now than they were at this time last year. However, sports revolve around the objective measurement of wins and losses. Even though they won considerably more regular-season games, it didn’t translate to any added playoff success.

There’s no way to sugar coat it. The Cavs failed the final exam at the end of the year.

“We had a goal to make the next jump,” Atkinson said. “So, I’m not sure we can say that [we were successful] right? I do think we can say we got better and we improved, but success would be you’re going to the conference finals, so we can’t deem it a success.”

“We took a step in the right direction, but we didn’t win a championship,” Mitchell said. “We didn’t complete the end goal. So no, no moral victories here. We didn’t get the job done.”

Atkinson knows this team isn’t physically or mentally tough. This is obvious to anyone who’s watched this core struggle through repeated postseasons, but it was nice to hear the head coach spell it all out as being part of their growth plan for next season.

“I give [the Pacers] so much credit for being able to sustain that type of intensity for so long,” Aktinson said. “Now we got to find a way to match it, and we didn’t. We’re built for it, I think the type of athlete we have. … And then the mental part, we have to get over that.”

There’s nothing the Cavs can prove in the regular season going forward. The areas they struggle with aren’t ones you consistently encounter in the regular season. And now we have three years of data that shows they don’t play up to their normal standard when the game gets more physical.

The only way to change that is to consistently win in the playoffs. That’s something you won’t have an opportunity to prove until next May.

And they know it already.

“Y’all are going to write us the f*** off man,” Mitchell said, “but we’ll be back. We let the city down. Let each other down. We’ll be back.”